Thread by @TracyNovick

so here is a thing that I am thinking a lot about and I wish we were engaging in actual discussion and research on:

What are the trade-offs we're making to put students in classroom right now, and are they worth it?

There's been *just* the beginning, from what I've seen, of a discussion of what hybrid does for fully remote learners (unless they're split, quality seems to go down)

but largely the discussion has been so fixed on "you must go back into buildings" and "don't go back into buildings" that what going back into buildings and more importantly classrooms doesn't seem to have a lot of inquiry attached, from what I've seen

I was thinking this again because I heard in passing today a reference to the teacher "doing most of the talking" and I thought, well, no, not ideally.
But are we creating situations in which that necessarily is the case?

Small group work is out, turn and talk is out, all those varieties of gathering students in parts of the room to do XYZ are out

This is not to re-litigate students who cannot or do not engage well through screens.

I just really wish we were seeing actual intellectual engagement in what is going on in education right now--the actual teaching and learning part of education right now!

I really really don't, and it's heartbreaking.
It's turned into this...holy war. And no one's going to win from that, least of all the kids.

and I have the same question about the back and forth with quarantining. Routines and things one can count on are one way it's "safe" to learn.

We're seeing that break down in districts every day.

And I am no--I genuinely am not, here or anywhere else--doubting anyone in a district right now's absolute flat out scrambling to do their best for kids, whatever that looks like, day to day, week to week.

But the folks who are supposed to think about this stuff--yeah, looking at the state levels here in particular, but it's true elsewhere--are so bent on..

....I honestly don't even know what. Scoring political points? Being sure they're right? Winning a round? Giving in to somebody's interests?

All I know is that no one seems to be asking.

And it means that education is committing the grave sin of refusing to learn right now.

Learning and doing better is one of the things I love about working in education, and this just makes me really sad.
Angry, too, but sad.